No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Will Saudi sex slavery ever end?

An intriguing news item was published in the Arab world a few days ago — a sex shop is coming up in Saudi Arabia’s holiest city, Mecca. Not just any sex shop but a halal sex shop. I have no clue whatsoever about terms and conditions upon which a sex shop is deemed halal or haraam. I also want to know, whether in this sex shop, a woman would be able to shop alone for her personal needs. In a country where women don’t have minimum personal liberty, and have no other identity beyond being sex slaves to men, there cannot be any doubt that the sex shop being opened there will be exclusively for the sexual pleasure of men.

Men from Saudi Arabia spend a lot of their ample wealth on sex. They go to various countries on sex tours to enjoy the company of expensive call-girls, and they roam around freely in the sex shops of foreign countries. From now on, however, they will no longer have to undertake the trouble of a foreign tour for sex-shopping, at least. For, EL Asira, the Sharia-compliant sex brand originating in Amsterdam and backed by Germany’s Beate Uhse, will soon branch out to the holy city.

Till now, the sex shops of Europe and America have not yet arrived in the progressive countries of Asia, but they have managed to reach Saudi Arabia, the most conservative and orthodox society in the world, where women are perceived only as moving genitalia.

The Saudi king, Abdullah, had 30 wives. Out of those, one was Alanoud al Fayez, who had been divorced by the king in 1985. But her four daughters are prisoners in the Saudi royal palace. Jawaher, Maha, Sahar and Hala are incarcerated in every sense of the word. They are not free to set foot outside the palace walls. They are hardly provided food twice a day, and their half-brothers beat them mercilessly. Some of the sisters are nearabouts or over forty years of age but have not been allowed to marry.

Alanoud, who is in self-imposed exile in London for the past few years, has broken her silence and spoken about the abuses inflicted on her daughters to the international media. To no avail, of course. If the most powerful nation on the planet, the United States, bows its head and pays obeisance to the mighty House of Saud, who else dare protest?

Barack Obama paid a high profile visit to Saudi Arabia a few months ago, accompanied by his wife. One does not recall any request from him to alleviate the situation of the sisters trapped in the royal palace, or even the general condition of women in the country.

This is the thing with Saudi Arabia. It’s kind of like a bratty child — whatever strikes its fancy, it shall go ahead and do. Saudi women cannot step out in the open without being covered from head to foot. They have no right to free speech. They can’t talk to strangers of the opposite sex because it’s considered haraam. They can’t take a car ride with someone without the fear of execution. They are punished cruelly if they happen to be victims of rape or torture.

The primitive laws of a seventh century society still prevail over a 21st century Saudi Arabia. Freedom of speech is unheard of. Writer-activist Raif Badawi, creator of the website, Free Saudi Liberals, is still being lashed liberally every other week for daring to have freethinking aspirations. Saudi Arabia doesn’t give two hoots about tenets of modernisation and civilisation. It is making first world nations dance to its tunes on the one hand, and exporting islamic terrorism to other muslim states, on the other. This state, without a shred of ethics and character, is going unpunished since there are no countries that can be brave enough to face the ire of a wealthy, oil-rich nation.

Such are the circumstances under which Saudi Arabia has opened its gates to a sex shop. What can this novelty do for Saudi men? Well, they can now be provided with leather belts, shackles, masks and an assortment of other weapons which they would now be able to use liberally to further treat women as sex slaves. To force them into dominant-submissive sexual role play. To bring into actual force the brutal primitivism of their patriarchal attitude against women by inflicting a new kind of sexual torture on them. And as usual, this too, shall remain unpunished.

If there is indeed any pleasure to be gained out of those shops, they would be exclusively for the men. The women are not to partake in any such thing. Those who do not have basic human rights must never aspire to sexual rights either. And those that do not have sexual freedom or rights, have no sexual pleasure. Sex slaves take no pleasure in sex — they need to be freed of their slavery first.

The world stands wondering when, if at all, the new generation of politically and socially aware Saudi youth shall spell the death knell of this dystopic dynastic rule. Time waits for them.

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Comments

I’ve seen such shops in KSA since many years. It’s mostly for women only where even the shopkeeper is female. And the products are usually night gowns and female intimate wear. Not scandalous.. All allowed within the boundaries of the beautiful relationship between a husband wife in islam..

2 times i got exit from saudi spoiling 2 years of my life
Saudi having laws where we cannot talk any women but here all men will use dirty words about my wife in my company .jubail branch from manager to driver to watch man all had misbehaved with me now i want to go back to my country somebody please help to get exit please.i got beaten harassed abused humiliated please somebody help me to go india to get married i became sick hear in male dominated country please somebody help me in getting exit from hear they are telling to pay 7200 sar to put own ticket please help me in forwarding my message every where so that i can leave my life ,that i have a right ,i had gone in unconsciousness
Please take me out of here i had been ordered not to talk any body but it is damaging me completely please help me i don’t no y they are doing like this all are telling me i am getting exit please inform me i had not signed my exit papers,they are forcing ,please transfer me to dammam, please ,i tried all the methods to come out of this but nothing is working please ..
i don’t no y they are doing like this How much islamic the saudi is.. making unfit madical reports making fake cases with fake eyewitness last year and this year same thing happens here even fake islam they follows which is not at all islam.Here in saudi i came one year before i had been given reason i am sick not agreeing my wife to sleep with them whole saudi m*******.I had never refused for that ( where is $ € )still .i had been framed in wrong evidence that i am beating the guys .but the truth is guys are beating me making me cuckold giving me bad words that all sleep with my wife but for me not allowed to talk any girl the same thing happening presently but their is no police no court in this country to hear my voice but please who read this message take it to saudi government i am sure they will kill me for untruth reason killing to victim but giving relief to guilty please tell saudi government to cut my head or give me exit i will go to my country leaving this fucking country were police nor company nor government giving me justice even making my life more and more worst by imposing wrong evidence on me please somebody take it to police tell them cut my head or give me exit please .i cannot be in this country any more i promise i will never come here .here no human rights no justice with innocent .they are topmost in violating in human rights.i want to go to india. i agree that u do my marriage sleep with her.please give me job or send to i will search job their. Please take me back to job.
I agree that u do my marriage sleep with her. i don’t have work and salary from one month please now i will listen u. everything dedicated to who will give me salary.who had removed me who can take me back.my last company please send message to them because they are thinking that i will not give my wife to them to sleep with her.i need to do to get job.somebody take this topic to all companies so that they know wrong information provided about me that i am not good please share with others as much as you can
in 2008-2009 deccan college i had faced same thing i had been removed after one year torture,

totally 3 years i had spoiled in my life please help

in forwrding my message each and everybody
2013-2014 got exit from saudi bin ladin company
2104-2015 got exit from al zamil company on same issues

I think you miss the point Huma: that in a sexually asymmetric society, where biological differences are institutionalised and gendered, those who are already dominated will continue to be further subjugated by the new tools of their oppressors. Regardless of what sex shops symbolise and mean in other countries, in saudi, where women are repeatedly denied their own sentience and autonomy, I don’t see how this is a positive move. The fact that you aren’t scared, distressed or display any concern for what this might mean to your muslim sisters is grotesquely telling.